In an article titled “Ignatieff on the Mounties, one-on-one”, CBC reporter Alison Crawford asked Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff what he thinks about the RCMP.
His answer?
When I look at the Mounties in the squad cars providing protection in communities across Canada, I see people doing a great job, great confidence in them. Enormous support for them and they have popular support.
That is the answer of a man who is clearly out of touch with rural Canada.
His recent cross-Canada bus tour which is hailed on the Liberal Party website as the main factor in “rejuvenating” and “invigorating” the party.
I can’t speak to the truthfulness of that, but I can speak to a few other things in Ignatieff-land. It’s clear he never stepped off that lovely little bus into any rural ridings while he toured the land.
If he had, he would have heard a far different story than the rosy picture he paints about Canadians loving the RCMP, or exhibiting this “great confidence in them” he glibly states.
Because if he’d gotten down from his ivory tower he’d have heard names like Ian Bush (shot in the back of the head in “self-defense”), Robert Dziekanski (tazered to death by four of the RCMP’s finest), Orion Hutchison (killed by RCMP Corporal Benjamin Monty Robinson, the man in charge of taking down Dziekanski), and that’s just the short-list of BC cases. I’d need a lot more space to get into the rest of Canada’s run-ins with the RCMP.
Confidence is anything but high in the RCMP in the wake of numerous scandals and officer-involved killings of civilians.
Their image isn’t helped by the recent news of 7 RCMP staffers, 4 members, 3 civilians, who watched two inmates have sex for an hour or so, and never put an end to it.
No, if Ignatieff talked to anyone outside of Liberal party staffers, it’s certainly not evident in his public statements.
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